American  Bible  Goolety 


The  Story  of  the 
Arabic  Bible 


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THE  STORY  OF  T 
ARABIC  BIBLE 


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A  CARAVAN  IN  SYRIA 


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AMERICAN  BIBLE  SOCIETY 

NEW  YORK 
1906 


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THE    STORY  OF  THE 
ARABIC   BIBLE 


npHE  story  of  the  Arabic  Bible  deals  with  a  struggle 
J-  begun  by  the  fathers  and  bequeathed  in  trust  to  this 
generation— the  struggle  to  domesticate  the  gospel  of 
Jesus  Christ  in  that  wonderful  language  which  Moham- 
medanism calls  divine,  and  with  which  it  has  superseded 
Christian  language,  in  Syria,  Mesopotamia,  and  Egypt. 
The  story  begins  with  the  Arabic  alphabet  and  the  man 
who  shaped  the  type  with  which  to  print  it. 

The  mission  of  the  American  Board  had  no  sooner 
brought  its  printing  press  from  Malta  to  Beirut  in  1834, 
than  Mohammedans  criticized  its  Arabic  type.  The  type 
had  been  made  in  Europe,  and  looked — well,  about  as 
English  type  would  look  if  designed  by  an  Arab.  The 
Rev.  Eli  Smith  saw  that  in  plans  for  using  the  printing 
press  as  a  teacher  of  the  gospel,  the  quality  of  the  equip- 
ment counts  ;  the  press  would  be  handicapped  unless  its 
type  pleased  the  fastidious,  artistic  taste  of  Mohammedans. 
Such  type  did  not  exist  ;  therefore  it  was  a  duty  to  create 
it.  He  collected  specimens  of  choice  Arabic  manuscripts 
and  of  writing-masters'  beautiful  models,  and  with  a  reed 
pen  copied  from  them  the  letters  of  the  alphabet  to  serve 
as  models  for  the  type.  Since  the  letters  of  Arabic  words 
are  generally  joined  together  in  printing  as  in  writing, 
each  letter  changes  its  form  to  suit  its  position  ;  and  in- 
cluding the  vowel  points,  about  1,800  difiPerent  types  are 
necessary  to  print  one  complete  alphabet. 

The  preparation  of  these  written  models  having  been 
finished.  Dr.  Smith,  in  1836,  took  passage  in  a  little 
Prussian  schooner  for  Smyrna,  to  watch  over  the  cutting 


of  the  steel  punches  with  which  to  strike  the  matrices 
used  in  casting  type.  The  voyage  ended  in  shipwreck, 
and  all  Dr.  Smith's  written  models  were  lost  under  the 
smiling  waters  of  the  Mediterranean  Sea. 

Catastrophe  is  a  spur  to  a  determined  man,  and  Dr. 
Smith  at  once  began  again  at  the  beginning.  He  col- 
lected more  specimens  of  fine  writing  and  made  a  new 
set  of  models.  Then  Mr.  Hallock,  the  American  Board's 
printer  at  Smyrna,  under  Dr.  Smith's  guidance,  skillfully 

cut    the    steel  punches  and 
struck  the  matrices. 

Providing  types  to  print  an 
alphabet  may  seem  a  very 
small  thing,  yet  if  there  had 
been  the  slightest  slip  or 
change  of  form  in  designing 
the  letters,  or  in  cutting  the 
steel  punches,  Mohammedans 
would  have  refused  to  read 
any  book  printed  with  that 
type.  To  this  day  book  lovers 
among  them  prefer  manu- 
scripts to  printed  books.  But 
this  undertaking  was  so  care- 
fully  and  sympathetically 
carried  out  that  when  the 
work  was  done,  the  slant  and 
curve  of  the  letters  and  the 
thickness  and  swell  of  the  lines  were  singularly  perfect, 
according  to  the  most  critical  Arab  calligrapher's  taste. 
So  Smyrna,  home  of  the  second  of  the  Seven  Churches 
of  Asia,  had  this  added  to  the  riches  of  its  history :  that 
it  was  closely  connected  with  executing  the  plan  of 
presenting  the  Christian  Scriptures  in  the  great  Moham- 
medan language. 

With  the  finishing  of  the  matrices,  a  part  only  of  the 
work  was  done.     The  whole  batch  of  precious  bits  of 

4 


W'    [REV.  ELI  SMITH,  D.D. 


metal  had  to  be  carried  to  Germany  by  a  long  and  tedious 
journey,  for  there  were  neither  steamboats  nor  railroads 
on  that  route.  The  fonts  of  type  were  cast  at  the  Tauch- 
nitz  establishment  in  Leipzig.  Dr.  Smith  spent  some 
months  there  in  1838  supervising  the  work  ;  and  in  1841 
the  Mission  Press  at  Beirut  was  at  last  equipped  with 
Arabic  type,  the  equal  of  which,  for  beauty,  was  not  then 
to  be  found  in  any  other  printing  office  in  the  world. 
The  work  had  occupied  some  five  years.  This  achieve- 
ment, so  laboriously  worked  out  in  fine  detail,  was  the 
successful  execution  of  the  first  part  of  a  plan  for  a  mis- 
sionary literature  campaign  of  the  greatest  importance. 

The  Scriptures  had  been  translated  into  Arabic  long 
before  this.  The  four  Gospels,  at  least,  were  translated 
in  the  sixth  century.  About  the  year  750  the  Roman 
Catholic  Bishop  of  Seville  translated  the  New  Testament 
and  a  part  of  the  Old,  for  the  benefit  of  the  Moors  of 
Andalusia.  In  1671  the  Maronite  Bishop  Serkis  issued 
a  translation  of  the  Bible  from  the  Vulgate  ;  but  it  was 
too  costly  to  be  any  poor  man's  possession,  it  was  inaccu- 
rate, and  its  style  was  uneven.  The  British  and  Foreign 
Bible  Society,  soon  after  its  organization,  adopted  this 
version  and  circulated  it  rather  extensively  in  Syria  and 
Egypt.  This  was  the  version  used  for  thirty  years  by 
the  American  missionaries  in  Syria  ;  but  Mohammedans 
reviled  it,  saying  that  the  coarse  diction  and  the  graceless 
form  of  the  printed  letters  clearly  proved  the  book  to  be 
a  shabby  production  of  human  enterprise,  not  at  all  in- 
spired of  God.  Then  in  1851  the  Society  for  the  Promo- 
tion of  Christian  Knowledge  (London)  published  an 
Arabic  version  of  the  Scriptures  made  by  Professor  Lee 
and  Faris-es-Shidiak,  an  eminent  Syrian  writer  ;  but 
this  version  followed  closely  the  King  James'  English 
version,  even  reproducing  its  errors.  The  success  of 
missionary  work  in  Syria,  Egypt,  and  Arabia  depended 
upon  the  production  of  a  new  version  which  should 
accurately  render  the  original  in  perfect  Arabic  form. 

5 


In  1844  Dr.  Smith  presented  to  Drs.  Anderson  and 
Hawes,  the  deputation  from  the  American  Board  present 
at  the  annual  meeting  of  the  mission,  a  paper  containing 
cogent  reasons  why  a  new  translation  of  the  Bible  should 
be  made,  and  this  was  decided  upon  in  1847,  Dr.  Smith 
being  assigned  to  the  work. 

This  decision  could  not  be  carried  out  save  at  a  heavy- 
cost.  During  twenty  years  the  American  Bible  Society 
had  aided  the  mission  in  the  struggle  to  circulate  the 
Bible  in  Arabic.  In  1829  it  had  sent  $800  to  the  British 
and  Foreign  Bible  Society  to  pay  for  the  Psalms  in 
Arabic  to  be  shipped  to  the  Syrian  Mission  for  use  in 
schools.  In  1838  it  paid  the  cost  of  printing  some  por- 
tions of  Scripture  at  the  Beirut  Press.  In  1840  it  under- 
took the  expense  of  printing  the  Psalms  in  Arabic.  In 
1841  it  made  another  grant  to  print  the  book  of  Acts  with 
Dr.  Smith's  beautiful  new  type,  and  it  has  in  its  library 
a  specimen  of  this  edition  inscribed  in  Dr.  Smith's  own 
handwriting.  In  1843  it  furnished  the  money  for  an  edi- 
tion of  the  Proverbs. 

So,  in  1848,  when  the  Syrian  Mission  came  to  the  Bible 
Society  with  a  request  for  $500  to  pay  for  the  support  of  a 
native  assistant  to  Dr.  Smith  in  his  work  of  translation, 
the  Society  did  not  liesitate  about  participating  in  this 
great  enterprise.  Was  it  not  in  some  degree  a  steward 
of  the  Oracles  of  God  ?  It  made  the  grant,  repeating  it 
in  successive  years,  besides  bearing  the  expense  of  print- 
ing the  portions  of  the  Bible  as  they  were  completed. 
The  Society  from  the  very  outset  thus  committed  itself 
to  the  financing  of  the  enterprise.  Neither  the  Society 
nor  the  generous  donors  of  the  money  can  ever  regret 
their  share  in  the  sacrifices  which  made  the  Standard 
Arabic  version  an  accomplished  fact. 

Dr.  Smith's  method  of  working  was  marked  with  the 
thoroughness  that  characterized  all  of  his  undertakings. 
The  duty  of  his  assistant,  Mr.  Bistani,  was  to  prepare  the 
first  draft  of  the  translation,  using  the  Syriac  version  as 

6 


ARAB  VILLAGER  AND  HIS  CAMEL 


an  aid.  When  he  finished  a  chapter,  he  passed  it  over 
to  Dr.  Smith,  who  made  it  the  basis  of  his  own  work  and 
brought  it  into  conformity  with  the  Hebrew  or  Greek. 
As  soon  as  any  complete  portion  of  the  Bible  was  trans- 
lated, it  was  put  into  type,  a  hundred  proofs  were  struck 
off  and  sent  to  British,  American,  and  German  scholars, 
and  to  educated  Syrians  and  Arabs.  The  criticisms  made 
upon  these  proofs  were  afterward  carefully  collated  and 
considered,  and  the  final  result  was  a  translation  which 
had  the  approval  of  the  greatest  Arabic  scholars  of  the 
day. 

Dr.  Smith  sent  out  his  printed  proofs  of  Genesis  early 
in  1850.  He  had  translated  the  New  Testament,  and  the 
greater  part  of  the  Old  Testament,  before  he  died  in  1857. 
He  was  only  fifty  years  of  age.  He  had  hoped  and 
prayed  that  his  life  might  be  spared  to  finish  the  great 
undertaking.  But  it  was  not  to  be.  When  he  saw  that 
his  life  had  reached  its  allotted  term,  he  explicitly  for- 
bade the  publication,  in  his  name,  of  any  part  of  the 
translation,  except  the  books  of  Genesis  and  Exodus  and 
the  first  twelve  chapters  of  Matthew.  All  the  rest  must 
be  regarded  as  unfinished  work.  So  he  fell  asleep,  in  the 
place  of  his  labors,  on  Sunday  morning,  January  11, 
1857. 

We  commonly  speak  of  the  Arabic  Bible  as  having 
required  sixteen  years  for  its  preparation,  but  Dr.  Smith's 
work  from  1836  onward  was  definitely  and  closely  re- 
lated to  the  translation.  He  never  relaxed  for  a  moment 
the  study  of  the  Arabic  language.  Since  he  steadily 
labored  on  his  preparations  from  that  year,  it  is  perfectly 
proper  to  say  that  the  translation  of  the  existing  Arabic 
Bible  cost  the  two  great  men,  Smith  and  Van  Dyck, 
twenty-eight  years  of  hard  labor. 

For  a  moment  Dr.  Smith's  death  seemed  to  crush 
beyond  reconstruction  the  enterprise  of  Arabic  Bible 
translation.  The  American  Bible  Society  had  spent 
some  ^10,000  upon  Arabic  Scriptures,  and  had  nothing  to 

8 


show  for  this  great  outlay  but  a  few  volumes  of  an  un- 
satisfactory, old  version  and  piles  of  unfinished  manu- 
script. 

But  one  of  the  notable  characteristics  of  the  Bible 
enterprise  in  foreign  mission  fields  is  that  those  engaged 
in  it  have  no  faculty  for  perceiving  defeat.     The  death 


REV.  C.  V.  A.  VAN  DYCK,  D.D. 

of  the  leader  in  this  Bible  translation  meant,  not  stop- 
page of  the  work,  but  prompt  action  to  find  a  new  leader, 
also  able  to  use  Arabic  as  his  own  language.  The  Rev. 
Cornelius  Van  Dyck  had  been  in  the  service  of  the 
American  Board  in  Syria  seventeen  years  at  the  time  of 
Dr.  Smith's  death.     He  was  one  of  the  choice  scholars  of 

9 


the  mission,  having  an  extraordinary  fluency  in  the  use  of 
the  Arabic.  Very  shortly  his  associates  sent  to  Boston  a 
request  for  Dr.  Van  Dyck's  transfer  from  his  station  at 
Sidon  to  Beirut,  that  he  might  take  up  Dr.  Smith's  un- 
finished work.  He  was  then  thirty-nine  years  of  age. 
The  transfer  was  made  by  the  Prudential  Committee, 
and  the  result  amply  justified  the  choice.  Dr.  Van  Dyck, 
like  Paul  with  the  Athenians,  had  won  influence  among 
Mohammedan  scholars  through  his  profound  acquaint- 
ance with  Arabic  literature.  He  soon  induced  a  brilliant 
Mohammedan  graduate  of  the  great  Al  Azhar  University 
of  Cairo  to  take  part  in  the  translation  of  the  Bible. 
Thus  the  work  steadily  proceeded,  in  the  main  upon  lines 
already  laid  down,  the  Bible  Society  year  by  year  mak- 
ing grants  to  cover  the  expense  of  printing. 

Arduous  labors  during  eight  years  brought  the  trans- 
lation to  a  successful  conclusion  in  August,  1864.  The 
printing  of  the  whole  Bible  was  completed  in  March, 
1865.  This  event,  which  Dr.  Anderson,  Secretary  of  the 
American  Board,  well  characterized  as  "of  the  highest 
importance  to  a  large  portion  of  the  human  race,"  was 
appropriately  celebrated  by  the  missionaries.  In  the 
room  where  Dr.  Smith  had  labored  on  the  translation 
eight  years,  and  Dr.  Van  Dyck  eight  years  more,  the 
missionaries  assembled  to  pray  and  to  thank  God  for  the 
completion  of  the  great  undertaking.  Then  the  sound 
of  many  voices  arose  from  below,  and  a  large  company 
of  young  Syrians,  workmen  at  the  press  and  members 
of  the  Protestant  community  of  Beirut,  began  to  sing 
a  hymn  composed  by  one  of  their  number  for  the 
glad  occasion.  The  hymn  was  afterward  translated 
from  Arabic  by  the  Rev.  H.  H.  Jessup,  D.D.,  as 
follows  : 

"  Hail,  day  thrice  blessed  of  our  God  ! 
Rejoice,  let  all  men  bear  a  part, 
Complete  at  length  thy  printed  word. 
Lord,  print  its  truths  on  every  heart. 
10 


"  To  Him  who  gave  his  precious  word, 
Arise  and  with  glad  praises  sing  ; 
Exalt  and  magnify  our  Lord, 
Our  Maker  and  our  Glorious  King. 

"Lord,  spare  thy  servant,  through  whose  toil 
Thou  giv'st  us  this,  of  books  the  best ; 
Bless  all  who  shared  the  arduous  task, 
From  Eastern  land,  or  distant  West. 

"  Amen  !    Amen  !    Lift  up  the  voice  ; 

Praise  God  whose  mercy's  e'er  the  same  ; 
His  goodness  all  our  song  emi)loys, 

Thanksgivings  then  to  His  Great  Name." 

In  1840  the  Rev.  S.  H.  Calhoun,  the  Agent  of  the 
American  Bible  Society  for  the  Levant,  wrote,  in  a  plea 
for  funds  for  translation  work  :  "Is  it  a  matter  of  no 
interest  or  consequence  to  American  Christians  whether 
the  people  for  whom  these  translations  are  intended 
have  or  do  not  have  the  Word  of  God  in  a  language 
which  they  can  understand  ?  Oh,  that  Christians  in 
America  would  reflect  a  little  upon  the  condition  of  a 
nation  which  has  no  Bible  !  "  Perhaps  such  language 
may  help  us  to  day  to  understand  the  spontaneous  out- 
burst of  joy  which  celebrated  the  completion  of  the 
Arabic  version.  "Surely  not  for  many  centuries," 
wrote  one  of  the  missionaries  at  Beirut,  "  have  angels  in 
heaven  heard  a  sweeter  sound  arising  from  Syria  than 
the  voices  of  that  band  of  young  men  ascribing  glory 
and  praise  to  God  that  now  for  the  first  time  the  word 
of  God  is  given  to  their  nation  and  tongue  in  its  purity." 
Dr.  Van  Dyck,  on  finishing  the  translation,  expressed 
his  deep  feeling  in  the  midst  of  the  general  joy  by  send- 
ing fifty  dollars  to  the  American  Bible  Society  as  a 
thank-oflfering  because  he  had  been  permitted  to  finish  a 
work  of  paramount  significance  to  the  human  race. 

As  soon  as  the  translation  of  the  Bible  approached 
com.pletion,  the  Syrian  Mission,  in  March,  1864,  had 
called  upon  the  American  Bible  Society  to  electrotype  it 

11 


in  ten  different  forms  :  with  references,  without  refer- 
ences, with  vowel  points,  in  large  type,  in  pocket  size, 
and  so  on.  Few  can  realize  the  tremendous  complexity 
of  a  page  of  Arabic  proof,  or  the  sight-destroying  labor 
involved  in  making  it  ready  for  the  press.  The  reset- 
ting of  the  Bible  for  every  new  edition  was  not  to  be 
thought  of.  Economy,  as  well  as  accuracy,  required  the 
construction  of  electrotype  plates  which  would  always 
be  ready  for  printing  additional  thousands  of  copies. 
The  Bible  Society  hesitated  before  the  great  expense  of 
this  work,  estimated  to  be  not  less  than  $35,000.  On  ex- 
amining the  records  of  sales,  it  was  found  that  between 
1860  and  1864  the  Society  had  already  paid  for  publish- 
ing 43,000  volumes  of  the  different  portions  of  the  Arabic 
Bible.  As  the  printing  progressed  in  Beirut,  these  had 
been  almost  all  purchased  by  the  people,  so  that  new  edi- 
tions must  be  printed  immediately.  After  mature  con- 
sideration of  the  whole  question,  the  Bible  Society  decided 
to  grant  the  request  of  the  Syrian  Mission.  The  work 
was  begun  in  1866  as  a  special  feature  of  the  fiftieth  year 
of  the  Society's  existence,  new  Arabic  type  being  cast 
in  New  York  for  the  purpose.  It  was  a  memorable 
undertaking,  destined  beneficently  to  affect  almost  every 
non-Christian  land. 

The  expenditure  of  the  American  Bible  Society  upon 
issues  of  Arabic  Scriptures  during  seventy-six  years 
probably  exceeds  $100,000.  Since  the  new  Standard 
Arabic  version  began  to  be  printed  in  1860,  the  Mission 
Press  at  Beirut  (since  1870  being  connected  with  the 
Presbyterian  Board  of  Foreign  Missions)  had  printed 
1,076,518  volumes  of  Scripture  in  Arabic.  It  is  some- 
times not  understood  by  casual  observers  that  this  is  a 
work  of  the  American  Bible  Society.  Mr.  Freyer,  the 
superintendent  of  the  Beirut  Mission  Press,  writing  for 
publication  in  April,  1904,  felt  it  necessary  to  call  atten- 
tion to  this  fact.  He  says  :  "At  the  time  of  translation, 
the  Bible  in  various  sizes  was  set  in  type  and  electro- 

12 


S^"^*^*    ^x^rs-^-   ..  '■c^-'^--.^s>#*^    Mr" 


^fe^ll^^ 


MEMORIAL  TABLET  IN  ARABIC  IN  THE   ROOM 

WHERE  THE  ARABIC  BIBLE  WAS 

TRANSLATED 


plates  made.  All  this  was  paid  for  by  the  American 
Bible  Society,  whose  property  they  are  to-day.  As 
necessity  for  printing  new  editions  of  the  Bible,  or  parts 
thereof  arises,  the  American  Bible  Society  gives  authority 
for  the  work,  and  the  Mission  Press  does  the  printing 
and  binding.  For  this  work  the  Bible  Society  pays  the 
actual  cost  of  production.  Likewise,  when  Scriptures 
have  been  printed  and  bound,  they  are  distributed  and 
sold  by  direction  of  the  Bible  Society."  In  short,  the 
entire  work  of  Arabic  Bible  publication  and  distribution 
is  at  the  expense  and  under  the  direction  of  the  American 
Bible  Society,  through  its  Agency  in  Constantinople, 
with  this  exception — that  the  British  Bible  Society  dis- 
tributes, at  its  own  expense,  the  Scriptures  which  it  re- 
ceives at  cost  price  from  the  American  Bible  Society. 

The  friends  who  have  contributed  to  this  work  in 
previous  years,  and  those  who  have  rallied  to  prevent  its 
suspension  in  this  year  (1906),  will  naturally  ask,  before 
we  leave  this  story  of  the  Arabic  Bible,  "What  is  the 
good  of  it  all  ?  What  has  been  the  result  ? "  The  Book 
has  gone  forth  from  the  Mission  Press  at  Beirut  into 
Syria,  Mesopotamia,  Arabia,  and  Egypt  in  many  great 
editions  ;  the  issues  for  1905  somewhat  exceeding  thirty 
thousand  volumes.  It  has  been  circulated  in  less  degree 
among  the  teeming  millions  of  all  North  Africa,  from 
the  Red  Sea  to  the  Atlantic  Ocean.  It  has  found  its  way 
across  the  Sahara  to  Timbuktu,  and  into  the  Mohamme- 
dan regions  of  north  central  Africa  as  far  south  as  the 
Niger  River  on  the  west  of  the  continent,  and  to  Mom- 
basa on  the  east.  A  regular  demand  for  it  exists  at  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope.  It  circulates  to  some  extent  among 
Mohammedans  in  Persia,  Central  Asia,  India,  China,  and 
Malaysia.  The  Arabic  Bible  from  Beirut  has  found 
readers  in  the  Philippine  Islands,  in  Yucatan,  and  in 
Brazil.  The  Syrian  colonies  in  New  York  and  in  Chi- 
cago, as  well  as  in  Buenos  Ayres,  use  this  Bible,  imported 
from  Beirut  for  their  benefit.     The  Syrian  Mission  has 

H 


thus  found  the  Bible  Society  a  faithful  fellow-laborer  in 
what  the  appeal  of  the  mission  in  1847  prophetically 
described  as  an  undertaking  "  to  give  the  Word  of  God 
to  forty  millions  of  perishing  sinners,  to  write  their 
commentaries,  their  concordances,  their  theology,  their 
sermons,  their  tracts,  their  school  books,  and  their  relig- 
ious journals  ;  in  short,  to  give  them  a  Christian  litera- 
ture, or  that  germinating  commencement  of  one  which 
can  perpetuate  its  life  and  expand  into  full  maturity. 
Such  labors  are  gigantic  verities  taking  fast  hold  on  the 
salvation  of  myriads,  which  no  man  can  number,  of  the 
present  and  all  future  generations." 

The  fathers  bore  the  burden  of  great  toil  and  expendi- 
ture in  providing  the  Arabic  Bible  ;  the  children  inherit 
the  duty  of  using  it  aright.  It  is  not  for  any  uncertain 
work  or  tentative  enterprise  that  the  American  Bible  So- 
ciety asks  the  interest  and  the  prayers  of  its  supporters. 
The  Arabic  version  is  a  proved  success.  It  is  one  of  the 
noblest  of  all  versions  in  non-Christian  languages,  and 
the  gospel  is  now  ait  home  in  the  language  of  Islam.  All 
that  we  now  have  to  do  is  to  protect  the  text  from  printer's 
error  and  to  see  that  supplies  for  printing  and  circulating 
this  doubly  sacred  book  are  yearly  made  good.  The  in- 
crease of  its  circulation  is  a  duty  left  to  us  in  implicit 
trust  by  the  heroes  now  entered  into  their  rest.  As  was 
pointed  out  in  an  address  of  Bible  Day,  1904,  by  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Hoskins  of  the  Syrian  Mission :  "  Not  one  of  the  orig- 
inal circle  of  workers  of  1844  is  left  to  speak  to  us  to-day. 
Bright  boys  who  entered  the  Press  in  those  early  days 
grew  slowly  into  gray-haired  men  as  they  handled  the 
millions  of  types  necessary  for  each  of  the  complete  edi- 
tions of  the  Bible.  Some  sacrificed  the  light  of  their 
eyes,  others  the  cunning  and  skill  of  their  hands,  and 
then  they  passed  out  silently  into  the  night  of  death.  Eli 
Smith  and  Cornelius  Van  Allen  Van  Dyck  gave  their  life- 
blood  to  the  task.  .  .  .  Their  memory,  the  fruits  of 
their  toil,  we  must  hold  as  a  secret  trust.     If  we  can  toil 

15 


on  as  faithfully  in  reproducing,  and  distributing,  and 
preaching  the  word  of  God  as  they  did  in  making  the 
book,  then  the  cause  of  the  Christian  faith  is  safe,  no 
matter  how  darkly  the  storm  clouds  lower,  nor  however 
slow  seems  the  coming  of  the  Gospel  Day." 

American  Bible  Society  Leaflet,  No.  32  1906 :  5, 5,  5m 

16 


DATE  DUE 

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BS460.A6A5     ^     ^.    ^.^, 
The  story  of  the  Arabic  Bible 


Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1   1012  00081   3776 


